The 2006 Kellogg Asian Business Conference will explore Asia’s ongoing evolution from a low cost manufacturing powerhouse to a strong player in advanced sectors. The conference’s executive forums will focus on current developments in Asia including branding strategies, the region’s growing consumer power, and investment and access to capital. The event will feature speakers and participants from General Mills, Motorola and many other large companies, as well as faculty from the Kellogg School of Management.

“The emerging middle classes of ‘ChIndia’ (China and India) combined are over 800,000,000 people or 2 1/2 times the population of the United States,” stated Corse. ‘The challenge of manufacturing companies in China, and other Asian countries that source products, is to differentiate and add value to their products, to buy or build a viable brand name, and to evolve to a marketing-oriented organization.”

The China Sourcing Presentation features a single-gate process that begins with extensive user research, concept development and product design. It then culminates with an engineered product platform with a quotation package that includes a bill of materials, mock-ups, models of prototypes, images and a color palette; and marketing materials, packaging, and point-of-sale displays and merchandising aids. This is followed by rapid iterations of two and three-dimensional concepts, shown to the target audience in order to drive product development.

“China continues to be the world’s factory store, but labor costs are rising and there are serious labor shortages,” added Corse. “In fact, one of our manufacturing partners will not even accept new business less than $2 million in the first year.”

Phil Corse has been researching, developing and sourcing products from Asia for over 25 years. His diverse background and experience includes: serving as a corporate product development and marketing director for consumer products companies, sourcing for the three companies that he co-founded in Singapore and Chicago, and operating as a new products and marketing consultant for multinationals.